


Nor Somnal Hymns

by Greyline



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adult Harry, Alternate Universe - No Voldemort, Determinism, Dream Sex, Emotional Coercion, Existential Weirdness, F/M, Feelings of Displacement, Kooky Villagers, M/M, Mental Instability, Mental Link, Moving In Together, Non-Consensual Somnophilia, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Lives, Possession, Sleepwalking, Slow Build, Vampire Tom Riddle, Weird dreams, Work In Progress, pronoun abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-06 02:00:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16379246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greyline/pseuds/Greyline
Summary: Harry unravels.Tom knits him into a jumper.And it's really not as nice as it sounds.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [conquerorofheaven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/conquerorofheaven/gifts).



> [Tomarry Halloween Exchange 2018] Very much a work in progress... Mainly because, two days ago, I scrapped everything I'd previously written in a fit of pique (I hated it), and began again from scratch. I will keep working, though, till it's done.
> 
> As ever, warnings on the formatting... And, you know, the inevitable gratuitous bloodshed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_It left long ago and is always now,_  
_Ascending beyond building, school or home,_  
_Stone roots dug past resident or love:_  
_A living, frozen thing of free mind,  
_ _Desirous of not reprieve **nor somnal hymns**..._

 

 

 

 

Part I 

arrival 

 

 

The locals still called it the Riddle House, though more than half a century had passed since any Riddle's actually lived there. The house stood proud but empty of life.

It was a big, old Victorian building, squatting watchfully atop one of the wold's broadest outcrops, surrounded by a swathe of wild cowslip and weather-hardy heather, which grew taller each day left unattended. Some of the mansion's windows were bereft of glass, lidless eyes staring down at the village huddled on the horizon, while others were coated on their insides with a layer of dust that made it look like they suffered from cataracts. Despite all this, though, there was something encouraging about the building. Its roof was coated in leaves and moss and bird nests, yet its slates jutted up through the debris with a certain sort of strength, and the walls were steadfast, if in need of repointing.

All in all, the house on the hill was the sort of building made to stand opposed to the onslaught of time — this was clear even in its dereliction.

This is what Harry saw when he came to question a witness who lived in nearby Great Hangleton. 

Lost and frustrated, he recalled wrestling with the muggle car's controls, feeling an awful lot like a paraplegic unreasonably requested to conduct and orchestra with his toes. The car sped dangerously down narrow country lanes, most of them bounded in places by nothing more than air, wishes and dreams... and a sheer drop of several hundred feet. The area was akin to a warren — roads crisscrossed and merged into one another seemingly without warning, going anywhere and everywhere... Except, apparently, where he had needed to go.

The car bounced down into a soaked depression — a temporary, tarmac-bottomed lake filled by the previous night's rain — and then burst up into a patch of sparse woodland where a tall group of trees stood clustered together, leaning over the road.

And then, there it was. This beautiful, sorrowful house abandoned on the hill, clearly without resident.

Two weeks later (following a string of hasty enquiries through the village, more put to the bank that owned the place, and no small amount of illegal magics), he'd snatched the house up. It was his. Nobody else's. 

"I don't like the way it's looking at me," Ginny confided, carrying in a pile of blankets.

Harry had already cast dusting charms through the most important rooms of the house and conjured tempory glass in vacant windows, so their stuff wouldn't get a surprise shower by way of sudden downpour.

Ginny, vivacious and redheaded, had been his fiancée for the last six months. A twenty-two-year-old professional quidditch player, she initially seemed all too happy when he told her he'd come into possession of a nice, respectable manor on the outskirts of a muggle village; she was less enthusiastic when he cheerfully told her it was a real fixer upper and the cost of it meant he needed to rent out his own cottage while work was being done. Or, in other words, they would have to live in the house before it was complete. (Not that he thought she ought to have much to complain about — the Burrow was a bit of a fixer-upper, too... permanently so. It never seemed complete but functioned as a warm family home, nonetheless. No — it was no real hardship to live in a work in progress.)

The bundle of folded blankets were cast down on a bulky, mahogany table in what Harry assumed was once the dining room; he dropped his own burden — a hefty box of books that Hermione must have sneaked in when she helped him pack up the cottage — next to them, sighing with relief and flexing his cramped arms.

"I'm not joking," Ginny whined, having received only a chuckle in response to her unease. "This place makes my skin crawl. Who did you say used to live here?"

He shrugged disinterestedly. "Some rich muggle family. Been dead for about fifty years, though, and muggles don't leave ghosts, so..." he shrugged again as he trailed off, feeling he'd said everything that needed to be said.

"When you say 'died'... I suppose it  _was_... natural causes?"

This time, he grinned.

"Nobody could ever prove otherwise, apparently. The local squire, his wife and son all showed up dead one day, not a mark on them. According to the bank—" and the local papers, which he absoluteld  _had not_ searched through in his curiosity about the place "—the man who owned the place until about five years ago — when  _he_ popped his clogs — was actually the gardner, and got himself arrested for the murders... They could never prove it, though, so he got away with it." 

More shrugging ensued. "Probably some type of rare poison. Never—" he joked, patting Ginny's shoulder "—piss off a herbologist. Have you  _seen_ the venomous, thorn-tongued toadflowers Nev's got in his greenhouse?"

"Poison? So... um... it happened while they were eating, right?" Ginny asked pointedly, staring wide-eyed at the table she has just placed a collection of her favourite childhood blankets down on.

He nodded solomnly, channeling the Twins. Theatrically, he told her, "It happened in this very room... Likely at this very table. One minute alive, the next—" He slammed his hand down on the table, making his startled fiancée jump a good half foot in the air. "BAM! Dead."

Hand over heart, Ginny glared, giving him the old fire he was so enamoured by back in school. He doubted he would tire of winding her up anytime soon.

"You can be such a git sometimes, you know that?" she asked dryly.

"Meh. You like me that way."

She huffed loudly, sweeping past him to exit the dining room.

"I do," she agreed, "but that doesn't mean... Oh, it doesn't matter. I better get back to the muggles before one of those buffoons breaks something important. That vase Hermione brought back from South America's already gone over."

"Reparo exists, you know."

Ginny grimaced and clucked her tongue. "Never liked it anyway. Best just let her think it met a noble end..."

He chuckled heartily as she headed back outside, opening the lid of the box he carried to go through the books within. Old school texts, mostly, and a hodgepodge of novels Hermione, Molly and his mother had foisted on him over the years, insisting he 'broaden his horizons'; despite their attempts, he wasn't much one for stories, preferring hard, cold fact over supposition and sensationalism. He briefly flicked through an old dream diary he'd been set for OWL-year divination, smiling in remembrance of what little shits he and Ron had been to Trelawney. Harry shook his head at a page detailing a prediction he would die violently in his sleep, victim of a sneak pillow attack.

Most the afternoon was eaten up lugging in boxes of everything from bath potions, to enchanted trinket boxes and jewellery, to kitchen stoneware. 

Outside, the sun was slung low in the wintery sky, barely warming the house at all; his breath puffed out white in front of him, and the trees surrounding the property only allowed light to filter into west-facing rooms. Sooner the muggle movers shoved off, the better. There was no active electricity supply. Not generally a problem for a wizard, who basically carried a fix-all around in his pocket, but magic wasn't much use to him right now — he didn't fancy running the risk of breaking the Statutes of Secrecy (he broke enough rules just in his haste to buy the house... Not that he would be letting anyone know about  _that_...).

Some time later, he heard Ginny calling his name from somewhere near the still-open front door. He leaned over the balustrade on the first floor landing, seeing her squatted down in the middle of the entrance hall, cardigan pulled in tight around her against the chill. Red through the door, the early sunset light shone through her hair, setting her aglow. Merlin, she was beautiful.

"Harry?" she trilled again. "Can you come take all this down to the basement?"

Harry trundled down the stairs curiously. "What is it?"

"George — that's what it is," she said grouchily, hands on hips. "His idea of a joke. Forty-odd bottles of wine just showed up, delivery from some brewery or another. I'd use a Featherlight on it, but..."

He followed the indicative jerk of her head to the removals men still outside, dragging the last of his and Gin's possessions out their truck and dumping them on the weed-ridden driveway.

"Yeah yeah, got you. Some things can only be done when alone..." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively as he said this, making his fiancée laugh.

"Don't do that," she said through a series of endearing little snort-giggles. "It makes you look like that creepy friend of your mum's. You know — the potions master."

Urgh... Snape. What a weirdo.

"Right then," Harry said, trying to displace the image of Ginny and Snape  _together_ from his mind. He unwisely chose to lift two of the wine crates simultaneously, then struggled to straighten up again. "Where you wanting these, did you say? You think this is a hint he wants us to throw a big housewarming party?"

"House could certainly do with some warming — it's freezing."

"Your dad'll be round to enchant the boiler tomorrow."

Ginny chose to ignore this information. "Just downstairs — put them down there. There's a door to the basement in the kitchen, but I don't really want to go down..."

It was odd, he mused. He'd never known Ginny to be afraid of the dark before. Something about moving must have her real shaken up. He supposed it was hard for her, having lived in the same house her whole life, to start fresh somewhere entirely unfamiliar. That was okay, though, because he knew she would get her bearings soon enough and ace this life-building test — she always excelled at everything she put her mind to.

The wine crates were so broad he could barely keep a hold of them — his fingers strained around their rough corners, knuckles turned white. He was relieved to find the cellar door was already slightly ajar, allowing him to hook his foot around the edge and, balanced precariously on the other, kick it wide open. He was instantly greeted by a damp, musty sort of smell rising from below, reminding him forcefully of Slughorn's storeroom at Hogwarts.

He descended in unsure increments.

The steps were steep and if the rest of the house seemed dimly lit in the waning daylight, comparatively there might as well be a nightsun in each room to the utterly noiseless dark down here. Harry was forced to feel his way down the steps, taking each one as it presented itself, never sure if the next was the last and put off by the odd, spongy quality they seemed to have; overladen as he was, it seemed almost like they went on forever.

They didn't, though. Eventually, all things came to an end.

It was on the first clear patch of floor he came to that he thumped the crates down, drawing his wand with a newly-freed hand. A murmured command had an array of twinkling lights bursting from the end of his wand; they danced upwards, met the ceiling and then span out to each corner of the room like (as a guffawing Ron had once told him when seeing Harry use this particular charm) 'a load of bloody fairies' in a silent ballet. Girly charm or not, it efficiently lit every inch of the space.

The cellar was relatively large, constructed of fat, grey bricks with a low, curved ceiling arching gently over the top like a tube station tunnel. Dirty water seeped through gaps in the stones, pouring in from the watertable, and where it ran rivers of strange-scented moss grew out the cracks, crawling out across the stone. Guess that explained the smell, then.

He spelled the first two wine crates (and Merlin, there were five more upstairs waiting to come down) onto a lone table cowering in the middle of the room, where no moss had dared come. They would need to get down here and exterminate the stuff as soon as they got a chance — this was supposed to be a cellar, not Wookey Hole.

Halfway back up the stairs, which he could now see were themselves wet, mossy and treacherous (he was lucky to have made it all the way down them without breaking his neck!), a creak shattered the silence of the cellar.

His head shot around almost fast enough to have him lose his footing. Green eyes narrowed at the crates, sitting there innocently as he had left them, lit grey by his fairylights. Perhaps they were just settling? Or, he considered with some concern, that table was a spindly piece of shit and would collapse in on itself any moment.

Maybe he bett—

                            "Guys? Hey, guys! Sis... You here?"

Ron's voice boomed from above, barraging through the open doorway and reverberating around the room. Harry stopped halfway through turning back down the stairs and instead yanked himself up them two at a time, rotting wooden handrail splintering under his palm. Another thing to be replaced.

By the open front door, one foot inspecting the remaining wine crates with faint interest, was his very best friend (and brother of his fiancée), Ron Weasely. The redhead had obviously just come from work because he was still dressed in his bright orange WWW robes that, in combination with his hair and windbitten-pink cheeks, gave the overall impression he was on fire. The other man grinned widely as he caught sight of Harry emerging from the kitchen.

"There you are, mate! I thought this place might've eaten you whole!" Ron said by way of greeting. "Can't believe you bought this dump... Look's like it might fall down any minute!"

Harry disagreed. The building was strong... just unloved.

"What's she think about it, then?" the other wizard asked as Harry lead him into the gloomy sitting room.

Ginny was already in there, inspecting ornate glassware that had been hidden in the antique, dust-ridden display cases lining the walls. She turned as they entered, offering up a gently-mocking smile.

"Who's she — the cat's mother? I can tell you,  _she_ thinks her loudmouth brother could do with a permanent silencio — that's what  _she_ thinks."

Ron gulped and Harry chortled at his expense, offering him a look that said 'You should know better than to get on her bad side, mate'.

"Did you get all that down?" she asked more seriously, shifting her brown-eyed gaze to Harry.

It took a moment for him to realise what she was on about.

"The wine? No — just those first two crates, before luggins here decided to holler loud enough to bring the walls down." Her lips thinned in displeasure, so he hastily added, "I'll just get back to it then, shall I? Uh... Ron, fancy giving me a hand?"

The man snorted derisively. "Nah, better you than —"

                                 At Harry's pointed stare, Ron's sentence stammered to a halt and, performing a quick, three point turn (ten time better than he had on his muggle driving test, too) so smoothly even Hermione would be impressed, picked up again in the other direction.

                                                                          "— me, unless there's a free bottle in it for me and the misses, of course. Then I'd be happy to! I suppose you got the good stuff?"

Harry could only shrug. "Don't know. Think George sent it as a joke... You know, posh manor house needs its liquid amenities, right?"

"I actually think you were right — it's a hint about a housewarming party," Ginny chimed distractedly, not looking away from her perusal of a cut-crystal decanter she just pulled out a claw-footed sideboard.

"George sent wine?" Ron asked, sounding confused. "Why would he do that, then?"

The other man entered the kitchen ahead of him, frowning judgmentally at the narrow stove. Ron was used to far better back at the Burrow. On Harry's orders, the remaining five wine crates lifted themselves a few inches off the hall floor and, with a second absent flick of his wand, followed along behind him like large, rectangular ducklings all in a line.

"Beats me," Harry said, directing Ron to the cellar. "Not really his sort of — oi, watch yourself on the stairs! They're wet — thing, is it? I know he's been a bit sombre since... well, you know... but still, his jokes usually have a more obvious punchline."

"Like that one about the Leaky Cauldron's welcome witch and her mop bucket. You ever hear—"

                                                   "Everyone heard that one," Harry said quickly, cutting his friend off just in the nick of time. "But yeah, like that. Don't know what's so funny about  _wine_."

"Would've expected him to send Odgen's Best..." Ron mused, bringing up the rear of the fat, wooden ducklings. "Urgh, it's shitty down here," Ron added reproachfully, hand drawing back from where it steadied him against the wall and wiping moss-wet fingers down on his robes. He inspected the finger. "Dangerous — I cut myself on that. Stupid wall. I'm gonna die of infection! And it's all your fau—"

                                           "Your wife's a healer!"

                            "For _mental people_ , not battle wounds! Point is—" 

                                    "Battle wound? It's just a little _cut_!"

"—you seriously need to get one of them chaps in — one of those muggle... uh, what does 'Mione—"

                           "Best not let her hear you calling her that. You know how she hates it..."

                                                              "—call them? Uh... arterial designers, yeah? One of them."

"Interior designers," Harry corrected with some amusement, wondering how purebloods could remain so sheltered from the rest of the world.

"Yeah, that's it. You need to get one in to do this place," Ron reiterated, helping Harry stack the first four crates almost up to the ceiling. Lowering his voice and swiping sweat off his brow with his sleeve, he asked, "Are you sure you're sure about this place, Harry? I mean... it's a bit... Slytheriny. Isolated. I know you like your privacy but... don't you think this is going a bit far?"

"Too far — if there's such a thing — would be buying a private island in the middle of the North Sea and stealing your sister away to it."

"There's one of those available to rent, I hear. They call it Azkaban. I can get Dad to have someone show you 'round, if you like?"

"Nah, s'alright, mate — think I'll give it a miss. Heard the locals are the crazy sort."

"Fair's fair. But... you really sure about this place? I mean—" he squinted around the 'fairylight' illuminated cellar "—looks like something's been  _living_ down here. And it _maimed_ me!" He thrust his injured finger in Harry's face, demonstratively indignant.

"Sentient moss, you mean?" Harry grunted, slotting the final crate on top of the stack and carefully casting an Unbreakable Charm on the grumbling table peeking out the bottom. "That's the only thing living down here, far as I can tell. But yeah," he concluded sagely, "I'm sure. Never been more sure. Place could do with a bit of TLC—"

              "What's that when it's at home, then?"

                           "—but it's perfect for us... I think it'll be perfect."

Ron examined the mouldy handrail on the stairs dubiously, then shrugged. "If you say so, mate. Not like I'm the one marrying you."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ginny made up the four-poster queen in the master bedroom with the new mattress Harry had preordered and a mix of his bedding from the cottage and the massive, squashy pillows that made a mountain of her own bed back at the Burrow. When he came in, he found her repeatedly casting cleaning charms at the heavy drapes covering all four of the room's windows; she didn't seem to be having much luck with it.

"You okay?" he asked, pulling back the blankets and scattering Ginny's excessive pillowage over the floor. He winced, not wanting an earful. "Sorry."

His fiancée scowled and gave up on the curtains, tutting at them fustratedly.

"I don't like this place, Harry," she said, jerkily ensconcing herself under the blankets beside him. "I don't like it at all."

He smiled contentedly and drew her into a hug, kissing the top of her head fondly. "It'll grow on you, Gin. It's new, that's all — just like the first time you stayed overnight at the cottage. Remember? You'll like it once we've settled in a bit — you'll see."

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

Mist, cool and questing, stretches languorously through the house. It slithers through the frosty air, an insubstantial serpent, tongue coming out to taste must and dust like an unfurling scroll. It appeared to ponder its options for an eternity, before curling its way up the stairs.

Head tilted sleepily on a folded arm — tilted enquiringly — Harry watches the creature of pearly-fog pause at the top of the stairs, a bent, concave pool at it's head twisting at an unnatural angle to the main body of the thing. He heard hissing — a crooning melody whispered along the ground, through the walls, as the head-part of the mist-serpent peers into each open doorway, deliberating.

Ginny is flat-out at his side, turned away; her long, red hair's a fiery halo across the white pillows. Careful not to jostle her, he pushes himself upon his elbows to get a better look at the invading entity.

The serpent rises in response, as if preparing to strike at some invisible prey. The sparse scales of its tail ripple as it draws itself up to a fearsome height, and then... waves? ...No — dances...  _sashays_ , almost. Like the proverbial snake charmed from a basket, who's body weaves back and forth to the chant of a flute.

He smiles at it bemusedly.

The covers are warm and the night air is as frigid as the floor. Ginny still doesn't stir as he slides from the safety of the bed and pads towards the bedroom door... towards the mist.

How strange, the way it seems to  _see_ him. 

At the doorway, slow-steadily, Harry finds his arm outstretched, reaching for the thing. A few inches from his fingertips, it leaps up and, impossibly fluid, swoops back over itself, reminding him of the casual, playful acrobatics of Hermione's otter-formed Patronus. As if reading this in his thoughts, the shape of her otter in his mind, the long thing of fog darts off, retreating down the stairs more quickly than it had ascended them.

"Hey!" Harry breathed into the darkness, keeping his voice low so as not to wake his fiancée. "Hey,  _you_  — come back! Stop!"

The misty serpent pays him no mind, heedless. It doesn't halt. Rather, it nearly  _snaps_ back around the turn on the stairs, as if tugged the same way a vacuum cleaner automatically recoils its cord.

Rushing forth, Harry crept down the stairs in the swift, silent sort of way that recalled a school career rife with midnight wanderings and the avoiding of teacher patrols. He sets a brisk pace down to the bottom of the stairs, agilely hopping the one creaking step instinctively, as if he has lived in the house decades rather than mere hours.

He steals through the hall, past the front door (which Ron fitted with a brand new charmed lock, earlier in the evening), then lingers a brief moment, rotating slowly on the spot — a one man waltz. Where has the mist crept off to?

    There.

He can see it. A long, U-shaped limb of snake hangs limply down from the top of the kitchen cabinets. His gaze remains fixed on it as his rotation ends. A pleased smile stretches his mouth unnaturally wide, showing more teeth than he before knew himself to have.

He steps forward—

               Reacting faster than he can reconcile, the misty serpent drops itself down from the cabinet and shoots straight through the closed door to the cellar.

_What a tease_ , he thinks without any real malice.

Heat bubbles up in his gut and washes through his blood.

Immediately, he is at the cellar door. There's no intermediary crossing of the hall or entering the kitchen; one moment he is stood transfixed in the hallway, sweltering in the freezing air even though he's in nothing but his pants and a ratty old T-shirt. Then, his arm's outstretched again as it had been at the top of the stairs, hand closing around the doorknob.

He yanks the door wide, gaze lidded by swelling heat as he spies his quarry stowed within.

The mist-serpent darts out its tongue. Its beautiful, shimmering form is lit a pale, nacreous blue under the slowly-fading fairylights strewn across the stone ceiling against all gravity and logic. Many long shadows are cast off it, undulating. Rolling and shivering across the mossy walls. Knotting together suggestively.

His stomach drops out.

Left hand opens the door wider. Right foot, bare of sock, settles toe-first on the topmost stair, and—

"Harry! What in Merlin's name are you doing?"

The snake gives a decidedly displeased hiss.

Harry blinks once, twice 

                                                     and woke

The room came into focus from a swirl of shadows and red hair and olive green dressing gown, strewn with cherry blossoms. Ginny was here. They were in the... kitchen? What were they doing down here? It was the middle of the night and (his nipples chose that moment to tighten painfully) it was damn freezing! And he was half-naked, to boot...  _mostly_ naked, actually.

"Wha—"

            He stopped himself short, analysing the expression on his fiancée's face as his eyes adjusted properly to the lack of light.

Ginny looked angry. 

"I'd like to ask you the same thing!" she demanded, lips and brow downturned in a rigid glare. "I've been calling you for the last five minutes, at least! You woke me getting out of bed... but you wouldn't listen!" she complained hotly, breath hanging in the air between them. "What are you doing down here? Why were you going down the basement?"

At this query, Harry frowned himself.

"I— I don't know," he admitted, embarrassed. Resurging heat creeped up the back of his neck. "I was..."

He thought back, trying to work out why he'd come down here.  _How_ he had, for that matter.

A flicker of something silver slunk through his mind, strong and illusive... a susurrus... an alluring murmur of a voice... an enticing summons...

"I was... I don't know. I don't," he repeated, defeated by his own memory. "I was dreaming, I think."

Ginny led him back upstairs by the hand. Her skin was warm and soft and... utterly wrong, unwanted, unsatisfying. 

And downstairs, back in the cellar, he thought he heard a patient hiss and the soft clink of a glass.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The dawn came sweet and pale each morning on the wold, crested in birdsong.

Today, the sound of larks and starlings was shot through by clicks and scrangly clanks from a hefty, antique lawnmower that had been enchanted by Arthur Weasley and was currently being operated by Harry. Just to get the damned thing to move, he had to throw all his weight behind it; his shoulders burned with exertion as he forced the mower to navigate up and down the enormous, overgrown lawn that wrapped around the house, cursing heavily with each, suddenly-splintering stick its sharp, rotating blades met, and each ricocheting pebble it launched up into his face. Sometimes, machinery sucked.

It was five days since he and Ginny had moved into their new home... and three days since a snowed-under-at-work Arthur came to replace the neglected-manor's rusted boiler with one of the man's own (rather brilliant, all things considered) design. Regretfully, the welcome increase of warmth inside the house had done nothing to thaw his fiancée's malcontent with their new living situation, which only seemed to grow with each passing day, no matter how many small jobs Harry completed to make the place a bit more habitable. 

After only having done half the lawn (and feeling half-dead for it, too), he stowed the mower away in the surprisingly-new shed near the gardener's cottage.

Harry slouched back over to the house. He found himself lingering at the back door, watching Ginny in the kitchen. She was lent tiredly against the cooker, one hand on a pan handle and the other wrapped tightly around a wooden spatula. The smell of bacon dispersed compellingly on the air.

Gardening was hungry work.

"This kitchen doesn't like me," she griped when he stomped in from the dew-soaked lawn, grass stuck all over his shoes and coating his trousers up to his knees. "Every time I put Mum's crockery away, it all climbs back out the cupboard. And the stove won't stop spitting at me!"

For his part, Harry thought Ginny had an overactive imagination. 

The root of her problem was that she grew up in a magical house. Oddities were commonplace at the Burrow, a house infested with charmed objects and that had a ghoul camped out in its attic. The things she said, though... they just weren't likely. Muggle houses were just bricks and mortar — they didn't reject their new owners, the cupboards didn't empty themselves when backs were turned, the oven wasn't malignant. 

It still wouldn't be a bright move to scoff or snort at her.

"Let me have a look at it, okay? I'm sure it's nothing," he placated, putting one hand on the edge of the AGA. "It's an old model, built to last centuries... One of the pipes is probably leaky, or something."

"Leaking?" But, these things run on  _gas_ , don't they? Isn't that stuff dangerous, if they leak?" Ginny demanded to know, severe in her fear. "I've heard about these things blowing up, sometimes, like an unwatched cauldron...  _choking people in their sleep_! How can muggles live like this? Aren't they scared their stupid inventions will kill them?"

Now Harry  _did_  snort. 

"It doesn't happen a lot... and in all fairness, this is a pretty old sort of oven, like I said. Most people've got electric-only ones, these days. Some people don't even have gas heating. You don't hear about a lot of explosions," he reassured.

As his foot touched the bottom stair, intent on going up to the bathroom to rid himself of the grass and mud, he heard Ginny talking to herself: "What about the choking-people-to-death-in-their-sleep thing? He didn't say  _that_ doesn't happen."

He barely managed to hold back a barked laugh in time. 

Sometimes, Ginny could be more of a worrywart than Hermione. (Funny, given his girl played a life-endangering sport for a living, where one risked everything from high-speed collisions with other players and the stands, to getting... well,  _bludgeoned_ by bludgers or simply ploughing facefirst into the ground.)

The bathtub tap hissed, filling it with half a foot of water in sputters and spurts. Steam rose up to condense on the ceiling, proof of Arthur's good work on the boiler.

His soggy-bottomed trousers were quickly stripped off. Grimacing at the peeling paint, Harry perched on the edge of the tub, dousing his sore feet in the too-hot water; there was a grimy line about his ankle, where his sock had soaked up muck from the lawn. A thin, limp sponge dug out the toiletry box was put to work on his sorry feet, but its porous flesh flaked pathetically with the effort, coming away in chunks.

A sigh, borne of combined resignation (stupid sponge) and relief (hot water was nice) mingled with the steam. 

Why did everything seem to be... not going wrong, lately, so much as... falling short — missing the mark. He guessed it was just this awkwardness with Ginny getting to him... His mind flickered back to just now in the kitchen, a few seconds on loop — her standing there at the stove looking as sad and limp as this sponge in his hand... tired and worn full of holes. Like a sun-seeking flower forced to grow in a windowless room. It was frustrating, how she didn't seem to be able to settle here — he had loved the house on first sight, but  _she_ crept around it like a mouse, staring suspiciously at shadows and jumping at every creak. He might as well be living with first-year Neville.

He loved the house, yes, but what had happened to his bright, energetic fiancée? Where had that wonderful woman gone — the one he first fell in love with and would face an army of overprotective brothers to be with?

When he looked at her, some days, it was like seeing an old painting, faded out, bleached by the sun. He _missed_ how things were before.

And then, speak of the devil, she was there...

Gin comes up behind him, having managed to slip into the bathroom without even audible footfall. She ghosts a gentle hand across his shoulder, wet and lingering. He shudders, mood veering away from the previous, seemingly-inevitable desolation in an instant.

He  _hmm_ s, relaxing in her renewed presence — eyes closed, small smile, tilting his head —

                                                          _fingers stroke searching down his jaw_

                              — back for a kiss —

His lips met nothing but air.

Eyes opened, blinked in confusion.

Harry twisted his body so only one foot remained in the cooling water, the other coming down to meet frigid tiles, so he straddled the edge of the tub. He half-expected to find a smirking Ginny watching from just out his reach, all teasing eyes and promises of pleasure to come — but didn't. There was nobody here.

But... he had  _felt_ her... just now... right then. She was...  _right there_!

Was he going mad?

Maybe. Sirius always  _had_ said the Potters were as crazy as the Blacks, only they hid it better.

A loud clatter came from down in the kitchen, curses chasing it. It sounded an awful lot like a plate falling out a cupboard. Right. So... Ginny was still in the kitchen and he was clearly losing his mind.

Maybe he needed to get out the house — go for a walk, or something. Harry always felt good after a nice, long walk.

He resisted the urge to hang his head in his hand simply by virtue of how filthy it was with a disgusting mix of soap, mud and disintegrated-sponge. His nasty fingers fumbled on the sink tap — it was fancy, old-fashioned brass and stiff with disuse. The water from it, when he managed to persuade it to unstick, was so scalding he could only dash his hands beneath it once, twice and then, after working up a bit of courage, thrice — result was pink, raw hands. At least they were marginally free of mud-sponge goop. The cold tap didn't feel like working at all — just another thing to fix.

Perhaps, if he repaired enough things then Ginny could be happy here. He could have Nev help with the garden, find out off the Weasleys what sort of enchantments a proper wizard home should have, ask his mother to help him pick out pretty things Gin would like. 

_Yeah_ , he nodded to himself, wiping his hand over the refreshingly cool mirror to clear it of steam, he could help her be—

                 _Fuck!_

Harry recoiled.  Stumbled back.

    Almost pitched himself behind-first into the undrained tub.

       Thwacked his head on the metal lip of it.

  Shit.

Heart in mouth, he sneaked a peek up at the mirror from his new observation point sprawled on the tiles. It was just hanging there, like it ought to. A solid shape on the dark-tiled wall, reflecting the glass-shaded light idling dusty in the centre of the ceiling. It had gone foggy again — humidity.

There wasn't anything frightening about it.

But Harry  _was_ frightened. He wasn't entirely sure what he was frightened  _of_... but the feeling was definitely there. It pounded hard in the centre of his chest and locked up his limbs. He couldn't look away from the mirror, overwhelmed by a sense it was... breathing? Watching him, certainly... 

And suddenly, Ginny didn't seem so m—

_Culingbhhhr!_

Startled, it was through a fresh wash of pain he belatedly realised the deafening clanging noise was his head slamming back against the tub again. He was going to have one hell of a headache later. But the waves of pain rolling through his skull served to snap him out of... whatever _that_ was. That stretching moment where the mirror breathed and pulsed weakly, almost as if an ailing heart beat behind it.

He managed to pick himself up and stumble back to the sink, where he wiped the foggy face of the mirror off again. His own reflection squinted back at him — dark hair that looked like he got in a fight with some thickets, green eyes cased in near-invisible contact lenses, a jaw squarer than his mum's and skin several tones darker. 

Nothing out of place (except the hair, but that was normal in itself).

For a moment, before, when he glanced into the mirror after he washed his hands... he'd thought it was a someone else looking back at him, a stranger. A flash of red. Then skin too pale, hair too tame, eyes too dark... and a sick, sharp smile any shark could be proud of.

And there, on his shoulder, had been a single wet hand print.

All that — that momentary insanity — was gone now. No sharp smile, no shadowy eyes... not even the hand print.

     Fuck. He was going nuts.

He evacuated the bathroom quickly. It was the creaky step that alerted Ginny to his return when he went back downstairs. 

She had plated...  _something_ up from the pan and was now jabbing her mother's least-favoured teapot with her wand, mumbling at it. Wasn't that the one that once shot chamomile over Padfoot when he tried to take a leak in it?

His fiancée tapped sharply on the teapot's lid. A breeze passed through the kitchen from the open back door, ruffling the tea towels. The back of his head throbbed, hot and sore.

_I'm waiting_ , said Ginny.

Or... something from  _near_ Ginny.

"What?" Harry asked, alarmed again. (He couldn't say  _why_ , particularly. Couldn't quite put his finger on it — the idea danced away like the snitch in a thunderstorm.)

The witch turned. When she spoke, it was with a hand covering a yawn and the air of someone who had said something once already.

"Breakfast's done. Might even be edible."

Trying to calm himself, Harry ignored the plates on the table. Taking a moment to glance over Ginny critically, he ran a hand through his hair, wincing as he passed over the bathtub-abused portion of his skull; his eyes caught most on the dark patches under hers, staining her lovely skin grey-blue.

"You look tired love," he said softly, all other fears and discomforts forgotten. "Working you too hard on the pitch?"

"It's nothing," she said through another yawn. "I've just not been sleeping well."

Harry himself had been out like the dead the moment his head hit the pillow each night. In his old place, road noise kept him up until the wee hours, but here everything was still and his sleep was improved for it (except the first night here, when he apparently decided to go for a somnambulant wander. He could barely remember that, though).

Ginny dismissed his continued concern over a pretty decent (for her cooking) breakfast of burnt bacon, hard eggs, very greasy fried bread and tepid tea.

"It's  _nothing_ ," she insisted over and over, sounding more annoyed by the second.

He let the subject drop in the end, knowing well enough she wouldn't let him mollycoddle her (as she perceived it). Instead, he told her he'd decided on going down into the village this afternoon to have a bit of a mosey 'round and maybe see how much it would set them back to have the local milkman start delivering to the house.

"If we're going to be happy here, we should get involved with the locals," he declared. "Be rude not to."

She chose not to address that point, preferring to ask, "What's a milk man?"

"What?" he said, blindsided for a moment, then followed up with a dim-sounding, "Oh, right," as he remembered that, as a pureblood, Gin probably didn't know how muggles got their milk. Still... dumb question. "Didn't you have one in Ottery? I guess... well, a milkman's like a postman, but for milk."

"Post men are those guys muggles use to carry their letters, aren't they? They put them through the holes in muggle front doors — I've seen them." She frowned adorably. "Why would you want to put milk through a door hole — are the bottles charmed unbreakable?"

"Uh... no — no, they're not. They don't put them through the letterbox, they leave them on the doorstep."

For a brief moment, his Ginny shone through, exhaustion abandoned.

She gave him a small, amused sort of smile and said, quite seriously, "If a muggle left milk on the Burrow's doorstep, the gnomes would steal it."

He supposed she had a point.

Dodgy breakfast uneaten, she scraped her chair back from the table with a sound that set his teeth on edge. Her kit bag was retrieved off the counter nearest the door and swung over her shoulder carelessly. Too carelessly — like she'd forgotten what she was doing halfway through the motion.

"Really — I'm fine," she repeated for the dozenth time, coming back round the table to peck him on the lips. "I'll see you later, okay?"

He nodded mutely. 

"You go into the village and see about your milk man... Hoskin's shouldn't keep me past five. Not in this weather — too nice. She only keeps us late when it's heaving it down. That woman's evil..."

 

 

 

And then he was alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The air was delightfully crisp when he finally got back out the house, a full two hours following Ginny's departure, and locked the door behind him. He inhaled the late-autumn air deeply, enjoying the way it stretched out his lungs and the taste of it on the tongue — so much cleaner than Ashford. The sun was blinding above the southern horizon; dew that clung to the grass when he worked in the garden earlier had evaporated under the threat of midday, and the carpet of red-brown-orange leaves on the drive now crunched underfoot rather than making a nasty mess of his hems. 

A least a quarter of a mile long, the driveway up the the house ended with an overgrown graveyard at its bottom; there was a derelict church, presumably to which the graveyard belonged, on the opposite side of the main lane. The vacant gardener's cottage was on the east side of the property — all the better to catch the sunrise — and had it's own narrow, track-like entrance, while the village of Little Hangleton was about two miles northwest.

He whistled as he headed down the hill, glad to be, for the first time in what felt like an age, out of the city... When he was little, he used to play in the woods behind his parents' cottage in Godric's Hollow. The forest had seemed so big — each tree was a tower, each bush a cavern of leaves. Harry loved the outdoors. The seclusion there.

All that ended when his parents divorced. Harry went with his mum and... he didn't begrudge that. He loved his mum to bits — she was his mum. But he had missed the countryside ever since.

His mother had moved them round quite a lot — always to muggle towns. That was where she felt comfortable, felt like she fit. He was used to the Muggle World. Sometimes, even halfway through his time at Hogwarts, Harry had felt like a muggle lost in a dream of dragons and princesses, or like Alice and her rabbit hole to a place where the impossible was the norm.

Sometimes, he still did. Even with two magical parents, even with his godfather and seven years of Hogwarts and almost as long again at the Ministry.

Sirius swore the Wizarding World was better viewed like that. It was better to be an outsider, pure of the restrictive, bigoted values of the most ancient families. It was better to wonder at the magic of everything than be weighted down by ages old hate. As Harry turned of the windy lane and manoeuvred his way over a stile into the sloping field beyond, he mused that he would never know either way — whether it was better to grow up fully in the Wizarding World or to grow up muggle and then transition. Nobody could ever really experience both.

But there were trees here. Lots of them. And grass and sheep all over the place.

Yes, it was good to be back in the country, he concluded as he rounded a copse of trees and looked down on Little Hangleton's outskirts. At this distance the cottages were mostly blurred together but he could see the way their slated roofs hung over their stone walls that, he knew from other houses in the area, were built mostly of irregular grey bricks; they all had big gardens with spindly trees, already mostly-bare of leaf and anticipating spring's return. He could just about make out a figure working in one of the gardens, working leaves.

It was nice — good. He was damn glad to be here.

Harry was smiling when he entered the local newsagent's. A second's glance showed the shop was ridiculously small but he guessed it was invaluable to the residents all the same, unless they fancied driving the eightish miles into the centre of Great Hangleton, which had the nearest supermarket. The price you paid for living in the country was a lack of amenities. 

Despite the store's size, his basket was still full when he placed it on the counter to pay. They even had a small electronics section — he picked up a durable-looking torch and slightly-pricey pack of rechargeable nine-volt batteries.

"You might want to think about some vegetables, young man," said the middle-aged woman behind the till.

He laughed, reminded of Mrs Weasely cajoling Ron to eat his greens.

"We only just moved in. Still living out of boxes so—" he nodded down at him miscellaneous selection of crisps and chocolate bars "—this'll do for now. Do you know if there's a grocers around here?"

The cashier shook her head, short, greying curls bouncing. "Shut down about, oh, must've been a decade back now. Hurleys' — that's the butcher's — is still going strong. That's two streets over. And the bakery's three shops down from us, next to the hairdressers — shut right now. Sunday times."

It was Sunday today? Huh. Harry had thought it was Thursday... So many days off work must be getting to him.

He nodded all the same to show he understood. She rang up his basket.

"I was wondering if there's a milk delivery for the village?"

"There's old Bert — he's been doing it the last thirty years. Not sure how much longer he'll be able to. Not too cheap, but he does veg and meat, too, and juice, if you're of the mind... and it's convenient. You know," she said, pushing her chained spectacles up her nose, peering at him contemplatively, "I don't think we've had a newcomer in... oh, must be twenty years — not as them who weren't born here, anyhow. The houses usually keep in families, see — no one sells."

Godric's Hollow was like that, too. Peaceful but stagnant.

"We bought the big house, up on the hill," Harry told the lady. "It needs some work. Be a shame to let a building like that just fall down. Do you think this — uh,  _Bert_ , was it? — will deliver that far out?"

The cashier dropped the hotdogs she'd been about to ring through, looking taken aback.

"You— you mean the Riddle House?" she asked tentatively, sounding preemptively scared of his possible answer.

"Uh... yeah, that's the one," Harry confirmed, wondering why the woman was so pale all of a sudden. "They—" ('they' being the bank) "—did say the last occupiers were called that. Why?"

She shakily pushed her glasses up her nose and pointedly resumed tapping on the till.

"Oh, it's nothing really," she told him nonchalantly. "Just old stories. Silly things — kid's trying to scare each other... That house is more trouble than it's worth, young man. Eyesore. It should have been pulled down years back."

"I don't this so. It's a lovely place... grand. Just a bit run down. Me and my fiancée'll have it sorted in no time."

"If you know what is good for you boy," said a new voice, also female, "you will be out of there by the end of the day. Nasty place — haunted, cursed. I wouldn't step within a mile, if I could help it."

The newcomer was an hunched elderly woman who had thin, blue-washed curls and glasses with lenses thicker than Trelawney's. She emerged from behind a beaded curtain tucked between the tobacco and the booze, leaning heavily on a cane.

Looking uneasy, the cashier shifted. "Don't be like that, Mum. He didn't know."

"Know what?"

"About the Riddle's," the daughter replied. "They were killed, you see. Rather nastily. I don't remember it, myself — was only a littleun. But... there was other stuff, too. Noises in the night, people getting sick... a shadow of dread..."

Rounds of applause. Harry had to give the woman ten out of ten for theatrics.

"...and then there was Frank..." she finished with a forced laugh, seeming embarrassed by her outpouring.

"I knew the Riddles were murdered," he eventually said, hand atop a pile of waste-of-paper magazine he thought Gin might enjoy. "They told me when they sold it to me. But... it was years ago. Hardly the house's fault."

The elderly muggle, mother of the cashier, wheezed out a laugh. "What does the bank know? They've probably never set foot in that house — it's just numbers to them. They haven't had to live with it their whole lives, raise their children with it watching them. So, what do they know? Load of gentrified numpties from the big city."

"Mum, you'll scare the poor an away," the cashier admonished. 

"Good," the mother said firmly, turning her milky eyes to bore into Harry's. "If you love that girl of yours at all, you'll pack up and be out of Little Hangleton before the sun's gone down. Do you hear me? Get out of that house."

Not a chance. Some crazy old muggle who put a bit much stock in ghost stories wasn't going to chase him out his home before he'd even had a real chance to live in it. Not happening.

Instead of responding directly to the mad old bat, Harry turned to the more reasonable of the two women. "This Bert, you mentioned... Will he deliver that far out?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

It transpired, when Harry swung buy the milkman's office (which also seemed to be his residence) after lunch, the man  _wouldn't_ deliver out to the house. 

He was a grizzled old man with a big beard and not much in the way of hair under the bright woolly hat he wore. He spoke with Harry on his front lawn, all bundled up in a puffy coat and mittens.

"I do the cottages out near the town. So it's not because it's too far out, you understand," the man explained near-inaudibly, glancing around furtively as if expecting the thrushes in his birdbath to report back to the house what he'd said. "Because there's evil there. I won't go near it. If you had half a mind, lad, you wouldn't either."

Harry could only shake his head exasperatedly.

Apparently, the whole village were a bunch of fruitcakes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That evening, dinner was a subdued affair consisting of tinned hotdogs, cheesy nachos and a share-size bottle of Sprite bought from the village shop. At six, Ginny had come home spent, robes muddy and hair bedraggled. She was not in a talkative mood.

Even though it had only been a few days, Harry was already beginning to feel like it had always been this way between them. He came with enthusiasm and a disgruntled Ginny turned up to shoot him down. They never seemed to talk, lately, and he might as well be sleeping on the couch for all the warmth in their bedroom this last... however long it had been -- about a week, he supposed. It was harder and harder to tell the days apart.

Why was this happening?

They were engaged. This was the right time to be moving in together -- it was supposed to be a happy time. No more would he get shooed out the Burrow each night so Ginny could go to bed, her encasement presided over by five very burly brothers (plus Percy); nor would she have to creep out the house once her family were asleep and surreptitiously apparate halfway across the country just to get a night with him. She hadn't liked the road noise at his old place any more than he had. When he picked this house, it was in part because he thought she would love it.

She didn't, though. That was evident in the way she stabbed sullenly at her food every meal and turned her face away when he tried to kiss her.

_But maybe it's not the house,_ a small part of him whispered. He wished it would shut up.

_Maybe,_ it said,  _the problem is **you**... The house is a mere excuse. Now you have achieved this dream of living together, now you can be together each night and wake together each morning... Now there is nothing to separate you, so she's getting cold feet._

No -- that couldn't be true. Ginny loved  _him_ , not just the dream of being with him. They would have moved in together sooner if it wasn't for the way Molly always tutted at the idea and reminded them, quite loudly, that moving in together before they married 'just wasn't acceptable'.

"What will everyone think, dearies?" the woman had chastised on more than one occasion. "I'll not have anybody thinking my Ginevra a scarlet woman!"

It took months of persuasion, even once he and Ginny were engaged, for Arthur to convince his wife that times were changing and it was normal for betrothed couples to move in together before the actual wedding. Not that Molly let it go easy, even in defeat -- she insisted Harry's cottage was too small for a family, too muggle for a respectable witch, and too overlooked for them to be able to indiscreetly apparate in for visits. Not that  _this_ place wasn't muggle (it's dearth of modern gadgets notwithstanding), but it was far enough from the general population that people could pop in anytime, at least erasing one of the marks on Molly's my-daughter-can't-live- _there_ checklist.

Harry had thought it would all be worth it: Spending all his savings, uprooting himself to the other end of the country, the loss of all his muggle toys. Ginny was a pureblood -- she belonged in the Wizarding World, deserved a proper magical home. He wanted to give her that, but... he missed his TV and his washing machine and,  _hell_ , he even missed his fridge and the simple pleasure of electric lighting. 

For a muggle-raised person in the Magical World, going full-native was a trial in culture shock. He'd lived one foot in, one foot out his whole life, even since becoming an auror.

_You'll never fit in with them. They say one thing and do another. They speak of equal rights and then shove you back to the muggles as soon as you look away._

He wondered if he would have had any chance of becoming an auror if it weren't for the surname Potter. Probably not. They rejected Dean, even though he was a damn good wizard.

Harry had Ginny, though. She was worth persevering through these adjustment issues. His mum might have thrown in the towel with the Wizarding World years ago, but he wasn't ready to make the same choice... not while he had Gin to look out for.

_And when she's not worth it anymore? When she weighs less than the bigots and stagnancy and nonsense?_

  She would always be worth it.

 

 

 

_Always is a **very** long time._

_Believe me._

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been far too long. 
> 
> Conquerorofheaven, you must be very angry with me, but I can assure you it's nowhere near as angry as I am with myself.
> 
> I woke up one day, what now feels an eternity ago (time's funny like that when you're miserable), to a kernel panic screen. Since then, I've been stuck on a mid-00s laptop that makes me wish for a steam powered snail, with none of my documents, etc. It struggles to load modern websites, for goodness sake! (And I don't even mean heavy ones, either.) 
> 
> This last fortnight, I've been forced two rewrite three thousand words of an essay on the possible creolisation of English between OE and its emergence as ME a couple of centuries later (what super fun!); lost my second chapter of Nor Somnal Hymns and _three_ chapters of About Revolution; and a failure to log in in a timely fashion lead to ao3 deleting a thirty-thousand word unposted draft. Needless to say, I'm a very angry bunny.
> 
>  
> 
>     Remember, there are only three certainties in life — death, taxes, and lost data.
> 
>  
> 
>       Also, mirror your hard drives, people... Or live in regret.
> 
>             Either or, either or.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part II 

fatigue 

 

 

He dreams in indivisible shadowshine and retreating lines.

Two of these things tumble over one another, revealing scant, warning sneaks of a third lurking within and between, waiting to stretch and expand and damn near gobble up all existence... or perhaps, just to gobble up Harry. That works too.

The bed is becoming  **—** something neither wholly liquid nor stable, enfolding him as a cocoon encasement spun of the softest blankets. He sighs and shifts in its embrace, turning so he's splayed out on his back, warm and safe.

          Somewhere nowhere, Ginny flutters away. A sleepless visage turned swathe of autumn-leaf butterflies off to seek the sun, as they are wont.

Cool lips meander lazily up his throat.

Swift fingers — long, caressing firmly — are cast up his thighs     his belly     his chest. Short nails scrape against his nipples. The heels of strong hands ease over and into taut muscle, persuading it the concepts of flight or fight need never be visited.  

     He gasps — moans...     wants for more.

His casing chuckles thinly — mist given mouth.

Languorous and hot, something stirs in the pit of his abdomen. He's harder than he recalls ever being in his life.

Not that recollection is working for him right now. No. Memory is unimportant... an aberration that must be abolished if he is ever to overcome the core of what makes his prey resist him (even if he is unaware of his own attempts). A foggy frenzy emerges from behind sickening dreams of summer afternoons spent walking beside the lake and family dinners at the Burrow. It overtakes them. Hangs heavy upon them, crushing them down.

_Yessss..._

                    _Oh_ —

Acceding from nothingness, a strong, wet flat of muscle draws vague shapes across his skin, leaving behind burning turns that could be  _fehu_ and  _thurisaz_ and  _laguz_ , trapped tight together, limbs draped desirously down his sides. They scorch, even as the tongue that traced them remains comfortingly cool against his feverish flesh.

        He can't breath.

            The air's too close.

A strangled mewl — a stillborn demand...   and  for want of friction, his hips begin to rotate in sudden primal desperation. They meet only the sinuate roof of his housing. He lets loose a throaty whine in disappointment.

The darkness looks into him... He shudders and implores.

Several things come concurrent, blurring together where they ought to be discrete moments and motions.

First —— (but not first — not really, because all is  _now..._ ) —— arrives that vaporous tongue at his ear, nipping     sucking     breath ghosting silky across his skin. Second, a long stripe bisects his chest — an imitation of  _isa_. Third —— (and perhaps, most important) —— is the idea of a deep, rumbling voice     rusty with long disuse... And fourth —— (definitely most important) —— kisses are lathed on the insides of his thighs, peppering places no mouth has ever tasted—

_Oh God — please!_

Out of his conscious control, his hips buck — are immediately held down to provent this. He wriggles. Begs uncaring gods to convince that mouth to move higher, to abandon his underserving thighs out in the cold and come claim a real prize.

His cock strains ever-upwards, throbbing and seeking      _seeking_      never reaching     — there is no relief.

   Fuck —  _why?_

_Please..._

_Not yet, Pet..._

Why not? Why not now, when his back arches for contact, when he's gone untouched for ages untold? Why not  _now_? He's been so alone for so very long and he just  _needs_ t—

_The time will come... and when it does, I will destroy you. You need have no doubt of that._

No! No no no no no _now!_ He needs it _now_.

_Now now now_ , his mind chants pitifully. He'll burst if he can't just _now_ now nownownownownownow _own_ nooooo _non **known**_ owo _ **no** NOWwwwwww_——

 ** ******

Harry gasped awake, a pile of sweaty limbs and aching erection in the centre of an empty bed. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday morning, a lengthy downpour made sorting the garden for Gin a hopeless pursuit; the rain was accompanied by a hard breeze that forced its way stiffly through Harry's apparently-porous conjured windows (he'd never been so great at transfiguration, to his father's outspoken disappointment), driving his fiancée out the door even earlier than her already-rigorous training schedule demanded, and the rotting windowsills transformed into bogs from the stray droplets of autumn-cool rain weeping down their insides. The overall effect was actually quite nice — he never took fresh air for granted and a thick jumper was more than enough to keep him toasty.

He mastered the AGA to prepare himself a nice breakfast of crepes and melted chocolate with the last of the season's fresh strawberries (if he were perfectly honest, he'd meant to do a nice brekkie-in-bed for Gin with this stuff, but she cleared off before he got the chance). Even with the boiler running, the kitchen didn't get much in the way of heat — he blamed those leaky windows — and his fingertips froze to his cutlery. He ate swiftly, considering how to solve the continual temperature problem in the house. Get a glazier, he supposed. Fast, too.

Halfway to the sink with his dirty plate, Harry had second thoughts about the likelihood of getting these windows replaced anytime soon. He went up to one investigatively and, dodging spits of rain, drew his hand down the cracked, curled up paint on the frames... Yeah, they were all warped — the frames needed replacing before new glass could go in. Damn good job kitchens were  _meant_ to be cold.

On first moving in, he was concerned by their lack of fridge. He needn't have worried, in this arcticness. 

He wondered how Mrs Weasley kept her food fresh, even though her house was near-tropical all winter... Perhaps he should ask? Or... maybe he should buy a proper refrigerator and let Arthur loose on it — an older model should hold up against the magic.

Harry was already garbed in his best muggle coat and out the front door, intending to go back into the village to ask if anyone knew of one that might be available to purchase, before he changed his mind. No — now was not the time for that. How would he get it back to the house without magic, anyway? Could hardly shrink it in front of the muggles.

There was no strong want in him, though, to go back inside and get another job done. Something told him he was needed elsewhere. So, he loitered at the back of his house for a couple of minutes, absently staring down at the gardener's cottage at the bottom of the sloping lawn.

A tingling magic in the core of him convulsed, curtly reminding him not all was well in the world — he looped his thoughts around the sensation.

Then he apparated.

From tight, breathless non-space, he emerged into existence on the top of a cliff, back pressed to a squat, white tower that overlooked the ocean. A gull startled at his appearance, squawked at him furiously and, finally, flapped off to find a more restful spot.

No rain here.

Rain wasn't what he was looking for, anyway.

A hundred feet afore him, a woman slouched crosslegged on an old, tartan picnic blanket. Her burgendy hair was a bonfire in the midmorning sun, her yellow, bigknit jumper hung fetchingly off her bare shoulders, and her shoes were prone, abandoned together on the grass at her side. Harry could see the beginnings of a ladder forming at the heel of her tights on one foot.

He smiled sadly at the desolate sight she made, staring out at the swell of the ocean beyond the scrubby cliffs between. Beauty was often broken.

Thirty seconds of long strides were enough to bring him to her. Harry settled down beside her on the ratty blanket. She didn't glance at him, busy observing a small sailboat fighting its way along the coast.

"My grandmother — on my father's side — grew up here," his mother said after an age, barest trace of a northern accent lingering even after seven years of the Hogwarts melting pot. "She worked down at harbour, gutting the catch. Her parents owned Clifton, before it went out of business. She moved when she was younger than you are now — met a businessman, your great-granddad. Moved north with him. Never saw this sea again..."

His stomach curled in on itself. "You're nothing like that, Mum.  _They_ rejected  _you_ — you didn't abandon anything."

"I don't see difference, anymore," she said, turning to him with a shimmer of tears on her cheeks. "It's harder and harder every day."

A witch apart from magic was a woman without a heart.

It hurt to see.

Harry stood back up, determined their visit should be a good one. He offered her his hand. "Come on, Mum. Don't dwell — that's what you always say." He forced a grin — it might have come out more a grimace. "Poor form not to follow your own advice."

His mum huffed a laugh, a snotty sound that made him feel bad for not coming sooner. They had an inerasable bond, his mother and he; he ought to have responded to her emotional distress more quickly.

She wiped her sore cheeks and nose off with the sleeve of her jumper. When she took his hand and allowed him to pull her to her feet, hers felt small and weak in his own.

"You're so good to me," she said with a watery smile. She sniffled. "It's meant to be other way around — I look after  _you_."

This time, his smile was genuine. " _You did_ — now it's my turn... Come on, let's get us some lunch."

They ambled off down the upper coastal path at a slow pace, down towards the harbour. The sea breeze blasted them with salt, ruffling their clothes and sending hair all over the place. There was a path down to the thin spit of sandy beach this side of the harbour; it was a walled, zigzag of concrete draped down the cliffside, faced with an odd, lime-washed sort of crazy paving as beautification. Families with strollers, grouchy looking teenagers and elderly couples littered the way down, their happy chatter unaffected by his mother's sour mood.

In the broad, cobbled plaza that served as the local fish market some days, a small restaurant jutted out over the edge of the water. They got themselves seated out on the overhang, next to the clustering, brightly coloured fishing boats bobbing serenely on the high tide.

"How's Ginny?" his mother asked once they were served, prodding an oyster with her fork.

"Let's not start that again," Harry admonished feebly — it wasn't the best topic between them. "I know you don't think she's good for me, but... I love her. She's... everything — she's everything."

_The house is everything._

"I know," she sighed, made up of regret. "You've said me it a thousand times, sweetheart. Still... I can't help but worry. I don't want to see you make my mistakes. Are you  _sure_ this is what you want?"

Harry stared cautiously into his mother's wide, emploring eyes and saw fear there. He took her hand over the table, briefly shooting a scathing look at a seagull perched close by (as signs all along the harbour said:  _'Stolen seafood will NOT be replaced'_ ).

"I know you think for someone like me, marrying someone like  _her_ can't work. But... what's true — was true — for you... It's not me, Mum. I'm not you — Ginny's  _not Dad_."

"I know, I know... I just — I worry because... there's no going back, love. I know you've had it explained before, but... marriage is a big deal in their world... Sacred, almost. Even more so to the  _old families_."

"Ginny doesn't give a damn about pureblood values!"

"I'm sure she doesn't," his mother said sharply, "but she has a career to think of — sports star extrodanaire, is she? Harpies, was it?"

He nodded, wondering where she was going with this.

"If...  _things_ should go bad between the two of you... if how you feel ever changes... I don't think she'd let you go. It's different for someone like her. To  _wizards_ —" the word came out wrapped in scorn "—divorce is shameful. After... I weren't treated well. Though we both know your father was one in wrong. And... for all its wonders, its progressiveness on matters of gender equality and sexual interests, its incredibly divisive in other, significant ways."

While Harry hardly wanted to hear it, lately his own mind too often turned to the very things she was saying.

What if he and Gin  _didn't_ work out, however impossible it seemed? Could he remain an auror in the event of a disasterous divorce? Would he even want to stay in the Magical World at all?

"Sometimes," Harry began unsurely, wondering how best to put his feelings to words, "I don't really  _fit_ anywhere. Not a wizard or a muggle. Just... I don't know — just  _not_ , I guess."

His mum tossed a salted green bean to their seagull voyeur. 

"I'm sorry," she said, voice small.

"Why? It's not your fault."

It was  _his_ fault. His fault for wanting magic but not being able to fully give up the comforts of muggle technology and society. His fault for not being able to make Ginny happy. His fault that, even having achieved his dreams of becoming an auror, he was always miserable and irritated at work.

His fault he couldn't see much a point to anything anymore.

Apparently, his mum disagreed.

"I... I think it is," she said slowly, tasting the idea. "If I hadn't left your father, come back to the real world, you wouldn't feel like you didn't belong to either...  _I_ did that."

"No. No — don't blame yourself. We can't know how it would've been if you stayed. Dad isn't... he's hard to get on with. Mean, lazy... a drunk. You did the right thing. If Nana Potter had seen him like this... she'd agree. You did us right, Mum."

Her shoulders trembled as she presented him with a strained smile. "You know I love you more than anything in the world? ...I just never want to have to think of you sat out alone in that big house you bought, regretting every choice you've ever made."

"I know."

_I know_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back in Little Hangleton, Harry arrived home to find Ginny asleep slumped at the kitchen table. It didn't look remotely comfy.

He tried to be as noiseless as possible as he tiptoed into the room and placed a small, striped pink-and-white paper bag stuffed with rock down on the counter. His fiancée stirred nonetheless. She scowled up at him through bedraggled hair, eyes unfocused.

"Ron nnnn Mieny cominnn fuh dinner t'morroh," she groaned incoherently. "A sssend off fuh a- a- away matschesss."

She looked — and sounded — a complete mess.

"How hard  _are_ they pushing you, love?" Harry enquired, dropping his coat next to the sweets and rushing over to enfold her in a hug. "My god—" he gave a hushed gasp as her head flooped against his arm. She made a failed attempt to waive him off "—you're practically — no, you  _are_ half-dead. You need to get them to give you a break, Gin, before they  _kill_ you."

"'ssss not their faul'. Jusssst can't  _sssleep_."

"You looked pretty asleep just then!" he exclaimed, horrified he'd let it get so bad. "Not even in bed! You can't tell me this' got  _nothing_ to do with your training schedule. You complained to me yourself the coach woman's evil!" 

He lowered his voice imploringly. "Please, let's get you up to bed."

"Noooo, nooo — I wanna go  _home_!" she half-wailed, sounding a bit like a put-out cat. "Take me home?"

He closed his eyes and counted backwards from ten in Gobbledegook. It didn't help. When he opened them again, everything about the world was still wrong.

"You  _are_ home, baby," he said, hauling her up out the chair (she was so light — too light). "Come on... I'm taking you to bed."

Harry cradled her to his chest, her head and limp legs dangling over the edge of his crooked arms. By the time he made the second floor landing, crossing the hall into their bedroom, she was fast out again. She didn't wake when he pulled off her muddy quidditch boots, nor when he fumbled with the complicated fastenings up the side of her practice robes. He swung her legs up onto the covers and folded the other side of the duvet over her, hoping she'd be warm enough that way.

How did it get so bad? 

For the last fortnight, they had been living in the same house, sleeping in the same bed, eating at the same table... How could he not have noticed Ginny's harsh training, coupled with mild insomnia in their new home, had escalated until she was this frail, gaunt thing that couldn't even make it up the stairs to bed? And just how much  _was_ she training, to have ended up like this in so short a time?

She went out early almost every morning and was back late most days...

Was she even eating? He couldn't recall the last time he saw her have more than a half-arsed dinner (whatever wouldn't spoil quick if not refrigerated) he'd hashed together with things hastily grabbed from the little shop in the village (under the disapproving stares of the cashier or superstitious mother).

This was his fault.

He hadn't been paying her enough attention. He brushed off her every complaint and comment; she  _told_ him she wasn't sleeping, was training too hard, was  _cold_ all the time...

What was wrong with him? This was the woman  _he loved_ , and he was just taking her for granted... just how his father treated his mother, before it all went wrong.

Harry wasn't sure how to fix this, but one thing was clear — something needed to change.

 

 

 

That night, he dreams of cool  
tantalising mist  
and shadowed eyes

 

 

 

By the next morning, he had forgotten all about it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday bloomed fresh and bright, air cleared by yesterday's rain. His mind was bright, too — less troubled than before; it was a good feeling.

He hummed as he sorted himself out, relieving himself swiftly, then briefly attempting to flatten his hair (when he woke cheerful, he was overly optimistic). His good mood didn't falter even when he was forced to use a charm to shave, razor misplaced amongst the bathroom-chaos, or when he was required to recall his scanty repertoire of household spells in order to get a clean(ish) set of clothing (what did wizards do without washing machines?)

Ginny was forgotten, out cold in the bed.

There was nothing good to eat in the house; not surprising, seeing as he hadn't been to the supermarket since moving in (he should scope out a suitable side alley for apparation, soon, if he didn't want to be stuck taking the dreaded car). He could go without for now. His home needed love, repair — some things were more important than food.

Today, he might work in the lounge. Hermione was coming tonight — some of the hundreds of dusty books in there were sure to interest her. At the very least, the sofas needed thrashing. That was sure to be a fu—

                              A door slammed into his awareness.

 

Harry's heart stumbled.

 

As an auror, such a sudden realignment of reality really ought to have him on high-gaurd. His wand should've been in his hand already.

 

            He'd left it back up at the sink, though...

 

                               and it wasn't.

 

With interest as opposed to caution, Harry approached the new door. It was standard height and mahogany — like the coving, balustrades and all the inherited furniture in the house — but double the width of most the others. There was no handle.

 

      Odd. 

 

He ran his hands over the doors' warm surface, the incut pattern rubbing enticingly across his palms. What was inside?

On the assumption it was a sliding door, he threw his weight behind him and pushed, first in one direction and then the other. The door didn't budge. His probing fingers roamed the mysterious new door like across a lover's skin, seeking any form of entrance; one work-ragged nail sank into an invisible seam about a third of the way out from the righthand frame.

               There.

 

He forced his nails into the seam and yanked his hands apart. It hurt. 

And the door still didn't budge.

Harry would deny he was capable of pouting, though he definitely frowned in consternation. It didn't matter where it was, who it belonged to... whether Hogwarts, the Ministry or his own home — Harry hated a locked door. Had no respect for them. It had gotten him in trouble more than once.

For now, he forced the matter from his mind. Moved on to what he really had to get on with right now.

Down in the dreary sitting room, Harry drew back the drapes Ginny had closed their first day here in an effort to stop heat escaping. They were ratty down here, their backs thick with mould where damp got in through the warped window frames over decades — they had to go. He ripped them down from their pole with relish, painstakingly removing each of the fancy rings that had held them to it (they were far too pretty, too intricate to chuck).

On some primal desire for the outdoors, he wrenched the bolts on the windows and throw them all open, relishing in the resulting cold air rushing around him. It was breezy out there today.  Nice.  Fair and cool.

He desperately wanted to go out, to be free... but there were things to get done here. Home was important.

So, full of regret for a beautiful day relegated to the shadows, Harry armed himself with a badly made, embarrassingly pink feather duster, a yellow dust cloth and a bottle of polish. Vintage hardbacks were pulled of the numerous shelves half a dozen at a time and stacked haphazardly on the coffee table in front of the couch. Every inch of the bookcases had to be emptied — a tedious task. He went into every nook and cranny exposed, spraying his way methodically through most the bottle of polish in his quest to return the room's grand furniture to it's previous lustre. It was tiring work he completed in a daze.

Harry's empty stomach grumbled reproachfully over the course. He didn't rectify the missed meals. If this house were to be livable, to become a good home for he and his love to while away their long years, stuff like this had to be put first.

By the time he decided to allow himself a break, the low riding sun had managed to force a few rays through the thicket up on the hill that way. It was late afternoon, at the very least. He needed to get a working clock up here. (Now, a week belated, he realised his phone battery had died with no working plugs around. He experienced a brief, poignant sense of loss of connexion to the real world.

 

Then it passed.

     

            _The House._

                    He needed to heal the house.)

 

 

 

_a jumble of memories_  
_broken moments and_  
_such pain stretching_  
_back endless years_

_back to the beginning_

  

and— 

 

 

 

Harry came to on the sitting room's moth eaten settee, clutching a pristine, mass market paperback. He turned it over in his hands to see the title. It was some sort of horror novel, entitled  _The Tale of the Body Thief_. He'd not heard of it.

The inside cover was surprising. First, it was inscribed by the author ( _'For you, Tom, who finds my works so amusing'_ ); second, it was first edition, first print, dated 1992. Both these things were mildly interesting... and confusing. The former implied this Tom — hadn't that been the name of the Riddles' son? — apparently was on friendly terms with the author. The latter suggested something mildly concerning: Somebody had been living in the house far more recently the records showed.

Squatters?

Perhaps... but the bank hadn't mentioned having problems like that when he bought the house. It didn't seem likely anyone local would camp-out here, what with the way half the village seemed to be terrified of the place (if the few he spoke to were any indication), and there wasn't much chance anyone from further afield would bother trekking out into the sticks to live in squalor.

The novel couldn't have been Tom Riddle's. The whole Riddle family died in the forties. A good half century before this book hit shelves.

Impossible. Impossible without a good dose of time travel. (But it still wasn't possible, based on persistent lectures from Hermione, who used a time turner for academic purposes for three exhausting years.)

_What time is it now?_

The sun was still caught in the thickets, though significantly further to the west than he recalled it being just a moment ago. How long had he been sitting here? What was he even doing — staring into space, contemplating unlikely books, time travel and squatters?

He had decided to take a break, sat down and then... the book. Then he was holding the book. And time had passed by without touching him.

_That is how it is... what it's like._

 

A moment forgotten was a moment unlived, Harry hypothesised. If something was unremembered, did it even happen?

 

   Move.   

   Yes. yes... he ought to move now.

He needed to get up and finish this room. He was meant to sort through the books so Hermione could have a look when she was over later. For that matter, he needed to plan for the dinner — Ron could eat enough to feed a family of four for a week in a single sitting (residents of the Galapagos beware, Weasley was here...). The little shop didn't stock Molly-style feasts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

          It's turtles all the way down.

 

The soft, if decussated couch sinks away into sand and the carpet froths like the sea. Harry's alone on a strange island of rough black rock and insincere comfort. The gulls weep and the wind wails and great walls of water rose around the outcrop, stretching their wings upwards to meet the moon.

Far in the distance, he is convinced he can see a redheaded wizard in overtly orange robes, sprawled out on some beach resting in the shadows of a cave. The man's roasting a turtle over a magical fire; the shells of several more are littered around him, flesh already consumed.

 

It's a dream.  Obviously.

Nowhere else would the moon pulse and burn like the noontide sun.

 

Starry skies come together, coalesce to capture burned brown-black eyes, crowned by curls of shadow and smoke and —

 

                                          eternity blinked ...

 

                                          shook off the galactic cobwebs and smiled wide, full of teeth like marble obelisks and bordered by pink, lush and plump. Emotions, deep and abiding like the slow, steady saunter of a vast glacier, meltwater dripping through its heart; they bubble up to catch his feet, splashing curiously around them, giggling in heady exultation. The solitude is ended! He has prey and companion now.

                          It's overwhelming.

 

She didn't expect this when she trapped him. Not his will, nor his call.

Nor he who was foolish and delightful enough to answer it.

 

                                     A reward was owed.

                        And a retribution.

 

But for now, his second self is waiting, here so silent — just watching   feeling    _bathing_ in his senses, minds blissfully conjoined. He has yet no understanding of what this is, how special he has become. No common, mindless man, devoid of magic and wit, would have been caught by his snare. They certainly wouldn't have joined so easily, so readily —— so desperately, wantonly —— with him.

 

Harry convulsed.

 

The moon returns to its soft shimmer and retreats, rushes away — diminishing circle like the distant opening of deep a deep well, beyond which daylight dwells. As tide, the sea follows, is swept up—  
                                    surface and salt and foam come together more solid  
                         and smaller than the sum of these parts (greater, too)  
          —to form into the shape of a person.

 The most beautiful person he's ever seen.

  

_Hello, Harry. Welcome within us._

 

It is similar to before, but different. Spirits touching   sheathed one inside the other. Last time there was an all consuming heat threatening to burn him up, and a certain distinction between what was him and what was  _other_.  Now, that barrier has died — faltered and failed. And he isn't even sure when it happened. If it hasn't  _always_ been this way.

 

                              (And always was very long  
                                              terrifyingly long...

  


He recoils from it, not wanting to touch something so very alien.)

  


  


_I wanted always,_ says the sea and the man.  _Already it is longer, more stagnant than my desire._

 _  
_

Always isn't a thing to be had. It is a concept, impossible to truly imagine... To touch it, to taste it... that is to lose yourself.

  


_But here we are... two, regardless. When two are as one, the self is lost._

 _  
_

_  
_

Then lips, not wet as the sea they emerged from — dry and still plump and pink. They met cold chapped ones and  _sought_.

     softly.

  unhurriedly.

 enthrallingly.

  


Had this been before? He thought it had. There's a memory — there buried in dreamspace with all his hopes and night time fantasies — of being in a silky cocoon. Of lips wandering up his body. Of an aching need gone unfulfilled.

  


Of a promise.

  


_I will destroy you._

 _  
_

_And I shall._

 _  
_

Their kiss consumes. Each dives into the other, into themselves, and deeper their minds entwine.

Somewhere within, there are memories of two lonely little boys, one trapped by cold, tiled walls and the other hiding under a plastic dining table while his mother argues with a bailiff at the front door. Jeers and cheers — a dead serpent, a hung rabbit, a captured snitch struggling weakly in their palms. A sense of misplacement, of misanthropy, of murderous rage simmering away. His mother was dead at his weak-willed fathers' hands; she can't even afford to feed herself.

  

           ME is now undoubtably _WE_              
           and _I_ has become  _US_           

                     **( _is_ US)**

  

  

            _then_  
                                  currency blooms—

  

A witch with long, matted red hair and tired brown eyes shambles down mossy stairs, a small stick clutched in hand — about the size and shape of a fat biro. She runs one, trembling hand down the moist walls as she descends, until coming to a point where they are clear and smooth... or would be, if not for the numerous deep grooves carved into the stone there, stained a sanguineous red-brown. The witch inspects this stained spot for a moment, before moving on.

Then she's at the bottom of the steps, circling around the room anticlockwise with wand held aloft to see by. The room's apparently empty, but for some crates stacked nearly ceiling-high on a little table that's seen better days.

  

           She doesn't want to be here... but what has to be done, has to be done.

  

Never having been particularly gifted in arithmancy, the witch isn't entirely sure where she should begin. A voice comes — a gentle, susurrating nudging. It comes, it _knows_... It directs her to a point distant from that of the first blood offering.

  

           The price for flight is higher than one might think...

                                                      and lesser, too.

  

With the wrong end of the little object she carries, the witch gets to work clearing moss out the stonework. Thick clumps of it are scraped out, soggy clots dropping wet-heavy to the floor, revealing that the grooves seen beside the stairs in fact stretch throughout the whole basement, though well hidden by the fauna. The shapes depicted on the walls seem to bend and curve  _outwards_ impossibly, as if the stone, the shape of the whole space, is somehow the interior of a great sphere; in truth... in _reality_... the room is a perfectly sensible rectangular shape and the vertical walls are straight and perpendicular to the floor, the ceiling curled above like that of a crypt.

Cleared of growth, the redhead tilts... gazes into the runic pictogram: A sun within a leaf with a crescent moon slicing above, points down like a frowning mouth, and sun-spoke stretches of carved, narrow paths running straight outwards like desire lines across the Hogwarts grounds, disappearing off into a Forbidden Forest's worth of moss. The witch can feel the power here. It seems to shudder through her very bones, to burn through her veins and weigh down on her mind. This spot is a centre of it — drawing in magic from the very earth above, land baked by the summer, and using it to—

  

                                      _Trap me._

  

Where me was we, the dual  _him_ shuddered — a mix of fear, pity and rage. A duplicitous kiss is continued as comfort, distracting the kindest part of his self. Where souls choose to touch, red and gold blooms in a broad, overarching roof like an umbrella... long, escaped streaks of it shower down around them — molten metal and blood-monsoon.

  

           The redheaded witch cries out. It goes unheard.

  

           The pen shows itself to be no _pen_ at all: Its 'right' end is shaped like a troll's club and equipped with a quartet of sharp blades.

  

                      She's bleeding.

Dizziness and regret and bloody fingers — scarlet... 

Rivulets run down her hand to wrap around her wrist like thin, red bracelets; they quickly spread out to paint the pale, freckled skin of her arm a hungry red. Against all sense and gravitational logic, the blood rises up off her skin as a narrow, waterspout-like stream — twisting ever in on itself as ink drawn away by a  _tergeo_ — and plasters itself to the pictogram.

      _What was art without colour? What was a witch without her magic?_

    If he wanted her, she would give all of herself in a heartbeat. He doesn't want her, though — that's clear. He wants _Harry_ —

                _Her_ love, her fiancé, her _future_  ...   all unwritten before it's even begun... 

    —and she must give him what he wants.

More and more of her own precious lifeblood pools in her cupped palm — a bloody pond and no time for skinnydippi— _fainter and fainter, thoughts extinguished and dreams eaten up by—_ and then is siphoned away, summoned to the strange runes, creeping up the walls to fill the furrows carved out there. She thinks the whole thing resembles the red canals of a violent Venice...   and by _Merlin..._ This is a forbidden thing. This is magic from her blood. This — what she has to do — is _unconscionable..._ Sacrificial magic is an aberration against nature, and— _Oh..._

  

                              Dark-light swells and pulses and simultaneously swarms outwards and implodes.

       

                                              Both _she_ and  _we_ vibrate, a remnant hum of ancient power that should neve—

  

  

                                                                  The three of them black out

  

  

  

  

  

  

Harry woke suddenly from a nap he never meant to take, summoned by the sound of shattering glass.

He groaned, though fully alert and sitting up in an instant; there never was much of a distinction between wake and sleep for him. Every muscle ached and there was a strange oscillation in the back of his neck... his brainstem. He let his limbs shudder and flail and stretch for a long, loose second, then lurched to his feet and rushed off towards the disturbance.

In the kitchen, Ginny crouched next to two open doors. One was to the cellar, the other to one of the cupboards above — the one she stowed the house crystal in, after complaining it rejected Molly's mugs.

She was whimpering lightly.

"What happened?" Harry asked, voice scratchy with sleep-induced drythroat and something else—

                                           _a kiss that killed the wind and seared the soul_

Gin didn't answer. When he approached, one of her hands, previously planted on the floor, retracted in a rush and she brought it to cradle against her chest. It was bleeding heavily. He could see now there was a broken tumbler scattered and her feet, red light from sunset passed through the hall to glint sharp off the pool of glass, twinkling like constellations.

Harry found himself repeating the previous question.

She shook her head. He didn't think that was an answer so much as confusion, an inability to either understand what he'd asked or even what had occured in the first place. Her mind felt fuzzy to him, obscured by some callous fog — comprised of acid, eating away at her mental faculties like termites in a log cabin...

  

                             A second of clarity passed as fast as it had come.

After an endless age—

                    

            _decked out with ocean and nebulae and stars and dark eyes swallowing him up._

  

                                     —Ginny's mouth formed words. Harry couldn't hear her, though, not while encompassed in something more  _we_ than  _he_. The two of them asked her to go over it again.

"I was just getting some water," she explained. "I woke up and... thirsty. Dropped the glass."

Harry's eyes lingered on the open dollar to the cellar. "You went downstairs?"

She shook her head again, this time in denial. "No — no. The door — the wind. The wind blew it open. It startled me, that's all."

He sighed in relief — though not quite sure  _why_ he was relieved — and squatted down before his fiancée, coaxing her to show him her injured hand. Blood was clotting upon it, marking out the lines of her palms — the same lines said to display the path of a person's future. Of course, Harry had never subscribed to divination... but somehow, seeing the shape of her future bloody... it felt ominous.

"Let's get this cleaned up," he said, rising and helping her to a seat at the kitchen table.

He ran a clean tea towel under the hot tap and came to inspect her injury. There was no glass embedded in it from what he could see. Lightly, he dabbed away the semi-congealed blood to reveal the largely undamaged palm beneath. The actual cut was surprisingly deep but not central; it sliced from the ball of her thumb, curved around the edge of her palm past her index finger, cutting through first her lifeline and then her head- and heartlines, where it ended.

Harry's nostrils flared in agitation.

"You want to get this looked at?" he asked. "It's pretty deep."

"N— no, Harry. It's fine—"

    "It's  _not_ fine — I can see your tendons!"

                                "— just pass me my wand."

"Gin — you... you've slept all day, you were really weird yesterday... and now  _this_. You can't do this to yourself, getting yourself hurt your so tired.  _What's going on with you?_ " Harry swallowed heavily, shoulders stiff, closing up around his head. "I don't think you should go. You're  _sick_. You can't play matches like this!"

The shutters on Ginny's once — long ago, before memory — open, expressive eyes came down hard, locking him out. Her mouth turned down into a hard frown.

"If I'm sick," she snarled, "it's because of this  _stupid house_ , with it's stupid, gappy windows and angry cupboards and  _watching_ ness! It's this  _place_."

She thrust her chair back from the table so hard it teetered on two legs of a fraction of a second before crashing over onto the tiles. The witch didn't pause to pick it back up. She stomped out the room and began up the stairs.

"I'm going to fix this up in the bathroom," she shouted back to him, when she hit the first floor landing. "And take a shower. I fucking  _stink_... And don't your  _dare_ forget my brother's coming with his unfortunate wife at six!"

For dinner. Yes. Great.

What a joy that was likely to be, with Gin in a mood like this.

And he still hadn't bought any food. Or eaten all day, actually... What the hell was he doing with himself? Where had everything started to go wrong, his life picked apart by... himself. Harry hung his head in his hands — he was shredding his own life. Why couldn't he try harder to make Ginny happy... and why had he taken that stupid bloody nap?

  

  

 

 

 

 

Ron and Hermione arrived for Ginny's gallivanting-around-the-world-for-the-new-quidditch-season dinner with two large carrier bags overflowing with containers of what smelt like Chinese food. Harry was grateful for that, though he would've quite unhappily headed over to the supermarket in Great Hangleton and cooked himself (mainly because this meant he wouldn't need to eat his fiances's cooking... or pretend to  _like_ it. There were only so many times one could make  _hmmm_ ,  _yum yum_ noises before giving up on life altogether. Whatever Molly taught her boys, Gin certainly had been no more a delicate flower or patient enough to have the culinary arts included on that list, Not that Gin was in a fit state to do _anything_ , at the moment).

"Harry, mate, we brought the wine!"

"It's sake," Hermione corrected. "Rice wine — or seishu. It's not really wine at all, of course."

"Isn't that _Japanese_?" Harry asked, glancing pointedly at the bags of Chinese.

Hermione crossed the hall without instruction to place their offering on the kitchen counter, heels clicking all the way. She removed her cream-coloured coat and folded it neatly over one arm.

"A common misconception, actually. Though originating in Japan, sake has long been produced and drunk all over East Asia. It is also," she added, glancing over with a wicked smirk he recalled from their first year out of Hogwarts (when she went a bit wild — niffler-witted, was what Ron called it), " _very strong_."

Ron came up behind his wife and rested his chin on her shoulder. "Only the best send off for my dear sis!" He glanced around. "Where is she, then? She's not driven you to murder already, has she? She  _can_ do that. Hogs the bathroom."

"Nah — she had the day off training. Slept it away. She's just in the shower, right now."

The wizard nodded. 

"Well, shall we get this lot plated up then? Bet there's some nice cups knocking 'round for this, too," he added, waving the sake around by it's neck like a beater's bat. "Thought I saw Gin getting some out the cupboards in the other room when I was here last."

"Yeah," Harry agreed, fetching the expensive, crystal tumblers that had come with the house. He jerked his head, indicating his friends should follow him, "and the dining room's upstairs. Don't think this table'd fit four of us."

The dining room was one of the few Harry had finished; it took the better part of two days to completely get the grey-looking Bokhara carpets clean enough to see their red-cream-blue pattern and to stop dust shooting into the air with each footstep. The walls were papered dark blue, unfaded through the years (presumably because the curtains were drawn all that time and the windows in here happened to be fully intact), and there was a large chandelier hanging over the long, mahogony dining table with its plush-cushioned seats. 

"Oh, this is much better!" Ron crowed, coming in and collapsing into a chair. "You should've sseen it before, 'Mione—"

                      "Don't  _call_ me that, Ronald!"

The wizard went on as if she hadn't spoken at all. "It was horrific. Dust everywhere and all these cabinets full of old shit downstairs — like a rich, Slytherin hideyhole. You remember when they cleared out the old Lestrange place, yeah? It was like that. Bet nothing  _here_ was demonic, though," he finished with a shiver.

"One day, you'll have to tell me exactly what it is that scared you so much there," Hermione sighed, setting out the food.

"Carhnt," Ron said, stuffing a handful of prawn crackers in his mouth. "Sighned this thing-eh, meanz I cahn' shay."

"A non-disclosure agreement. I know — _I just wish_..."

Harry laughed. Hermione couldn't stand not knowing something, no matter how insignificant.

She hurumphed. "Fine — I'll never know. I can deal with that. I  _can_ ," she swore unconvincingly. Frowning, she changed the subject. "Do you think Ginny's taking a bit long? I think... would it be okay if I go get her?"

Shrugging, Harry gave his friend directions to the only bathroom with a working shower. Hermione clicked off up the stairs, leaving he and Ron alone.

For some reason, a void seemed to have grown between them in the last few weeks. Neither of them knew what to say.

Ron kept eating. Every now and then he glanced over his shoulder suspiciously, as if expecting the drapes to try and strangle him. It might be best if they did, or there wouldn't be any crackers left by the time the girls got in here.

After a time, there came a hushed, rustling noise; for a surreal second, Harry thought the curtains really  _were_ going to get his friend, before he realised the sound was that of frantic, sotto whispers on the landing — the girls. Ginny proceeded Hermione into the room a moment later, hair already dry from her shower, her smile thin and fixed; the muggleborn witch followed tensely two steps behind, eyes shuttered and brow pinched. Whatever the two of them had been talking about, neither seemed satisfied with the conversation.

Hermione used a nifty serving spell (presumably purloined from Molly) to dish them all up generous servings of Ron's favoured sweet and sour pork, special fried rice and sesame toast. Not healthy, Harry was sure, but it looked damn good after a day of famine, all the same. Next to him, Ginny's nose wrinkled at the foreign-style food, asking questions about what the hell it was and if it would make her fat.

"Chinese. And I don't think you need to worry about that, Ginny," Hermione said kindly. "You're thin as a rake."

"Yeah," Ron agreed around a mouth of rice-heaped cracker, "you could do wiff some meatch on yuhr bonesh. No guy'sh gonna want to chow down on a shtick of shelery!"

The man laughed loudly and, at Ginny's non-response, Hermione grimaced. Even Harry wasn't sure what to say to that, other than:

"Mate, she's your  _sister_."

Ron swallowed and shrugged. "Don't mean I'm blind... or stupid. What you been doing out in this place, anyway? Dull as Binns."

"I've not been here much," Ginny said, echoing her brother's body language — a slouch and plenty of shrugging. "Training, you know? It's always hard near the start of the season."

Glancing his sister up and down, Ron made a clear, conscious choice not to comment on the fact she looked like absolute crap. Apparently, Hermione was a good influence on him; or perhaps, his wise silence was because his wife had just kicked him under the table.

"And what about work, Harry?" Hermione managed to force out lightly. "You've had a fortnight off?"

"I booked three months off," Harry informed her, swallowing a forkful of the oh-so-good takeaway. "They owe me it — not had a holiday since I started, I think, other than the odd Christmas. Not even that. Last Christmas, I spent half of it trying to convince Archie Gumbald, wearing a dress and not much else—"

                           "You or Archie?" Ron choked out.

          "—pearls and no, uh, underthings... must've been  _freezing_ —"

                           "Archie,  _of course_ ," answered Hermione.

   "— he wasn't a cat and could get down from that tree just fine!"

Ron guffawed, showering Ginny in rice; she glowered at him.

"Don't, Ron! Mental issues are very serious, not  _funny_!" the man's wife said irately, her ongoing training as a mind healer coming through. "What if you decided you were a carton of orange juice? Would you expect  _me_ to laugh?"

His friend glared at her weakly, making Harry grin — just like old times.

"Course not — I'd expect you to chase me 'round with a giant straw until I had a breakdown," Ron joked, swiftly getting over his offence. "...But the Gumbalds're known for their  _recreational potions_ business. Tosser probably got spiked by one of his cousins — always testing new products, the Gumbalds. Worse than Fred and George, that lot."

"He's right. Archie'd had a bit too much of something," Harry confirmed, mildly cheered by the old story. "Never worked out what. Only that he was dizzy, dragged up and thought he was a cat."

"Even so, it's still not funny, Ron. This is serious work for Harry and, if what you're saying's true, the aurors as a whole."

"I think it's... nice... they gave Harry so much time off," Ginny cut in insincerly, heading their friends' argument off before it could get out of hand. "I'm sorry I'll be away most of it." She glanced around her and shivered lightly — honestly, this time. "Not so sorry I won't be  _here_. I don't think the house likes me."

Hermione didn't take this very seriously — hard to blame her.

"It's just a house, Ginny. I'm sure it doesn't have an opinion one way or another," the logical witch stated flatly.

"I dunno. You ever had to go to Harry's godfather's mum's place?" Ron asked, echoing some of his sentiment on the subject from earlier. "The bat croaked it last year and the cleanup guys had a real time of it, Bill said. Clocks shooting bolts at them, rooms hiding when they weren't looking... Stuff like that."

Hermione's eyes narrowed. "That's all on the  _people who lived there_ , not the house."

"If you say so..." the man allowed with a shrug, humouring his wife. "Still... don't reckon a muggle house'd give you much gip. Just bricks, ain't they? Boring."

Ginny let out a long, soft sigh. "I guess not. I'm probably just imagining things."

_Or, things are always more than they seem. You can scarcely imagine the truth..._

Blinking rapidly, confused by his own thoughts, Harry shook his head to clear his mind. He refocused on the conversation, now leaning towards Hermione's residency at St Mungos.

The rest of dinner went far more smoothly. Ginny even managed to look somewhat happy again, making Harry feel things weren't entirely irreparable; with any luck, they would finally getting back to normal, now. This scene wasn't so removed from dinners in the Great Hall, the Gryffindor table loud and ever-boisterous but yet a bubble of privacy around the four of them, a swell of silence no rowdy lower-year could breach... They were always been close in school, the four of them, but he, Ron and Hermione left Gin alone there for her last year... and by the time she graduated, they were all tied up, training in new positions. They neglected her — he saw that now.

_Drifting is natural._

Had they ever really remeshed?

Once, he thought so... but perhaps things were worse than they had seemed. When Gin lived at the Burrow, the buffer of the rest of her family hid how  _separate_ they had grown from one another; alone in the same home, this separation became clear.

_What once bound you was itself unbound — such a connexion loses potency by its own failure. The heart recalls its faults._

Was Harry sabotaging his own relationship with Ginny?

He didn't know.

Harry was no closer to an answer by the time Ron and Hermione called it a night, the former with a mention Harry should drop by the shop sometime, the latter asking after his mother and wondering if the two of them could get together sometime to discuss the place charms had in therapeutic healing (Harry's mother ahd gained a charms mastery before her exile from the Wizarding World).

Harry's footfalls were heavy as he traipsed upstairs, echoing down for what seemed miles and reverberating back up his legs — the space below felt cavernous. He knew it wasn't.

This house... he's seen it down to its foundations. It was substantial but held no actual vastness — no emptiness. As he entered the bedroom, he considered how wonderfully its previous dereliction faded, filled by him.

That was what he was working so hard for. Missing meals for. Losing his fiancée to... (for surely, he knew at the back of his mind, that was what was happening. He and Gin were so much dust — they just hadn't realised it yet. They would, though... and when they _did_...)

_What you give shall not be forgotten, nor go unrewarded._

He toed of his socks by the bed, enjoying the slightly-chilly floor, and scavenged an old House tee from a cardboard boy (before going near that door again, no matter how interesting it was, he needed to hang his stuff up — wardrobes existed for a reason). He plodded into the master bathroom, still a work in progress but much improved since the new (to them, at least, as it  _was_ second-hand) copper tub turned up earlier in the week, and the showerhead above was also functional by way of some runic magic he didn't entirely understand but managed to implement well enough. That was good. Better for Gin to have somewhere decent to unwind after hard practices.

Not that she would be here much longer. Her first IQL game was in Japan a week from now, but she'd be travelling in two days to prepare. It would be like that much of the winter, with her nipping from place to place and him alone, waiting for her to come home.

_To wait for another is to walk out on yourself._

"Are you coming to bed?" Ginny called impatiently through from the bedroom.

Trying to get a grip on himself, Harry shook his head. Then he remembered she couldn't see through walls.

"I just want to take a shower first."

"Okay. I'll be reading..."

Reading. Sure. When Gin said reading, most the time she meant flicking through her harpy of a coach's notes for the upcoming season. She hadn't picked up a properly-useful book since graduation; her work didn't call for it and, though very clever when she cared about the subject, his girl wasn't one for going out her way to learn new skill she might never need — no Ravenclaw.

Harry shook his head as he stripped the last of his clothes and stepped into the tub, retrieving his wand from where he left it at the sink this morning and prodding the showerhead with it. The shower sprang to life immediately, casting blessedly hot water down on his goosepimpled skin. Even without electric, some comforts were possible.

_More than possible._

There was a shelf on the back wall, parallel to the freestanding tub; it was applied lazily with a Permanent Sticking Charm. The shelf was already cluttered with bottles of all sorts of shampoo and shower gel-like potions (most unfamiliar to Harry, as he never bothered much after the age of eight, when he'd decided his hair would  _never_ lie flat, no matter what he did to it). He shoved his wand down up there and chose the same bottle he had yesterday, which smelled faintly of clementines. Good enough for him — it lathered up, it would do.

Since the great-sponge disintegration, he'd replaced his old one with a polyester flannel grabbed out a bargin bin at the local odds and bobs. It was an improvement.

He washed away the day, not really thinking of anything besides the hot water beating down on him, the smooth glide of soap against skin, the slightest nip to the air coming through the open window... His muscles had been sore almost since moving in, due to the intermittent renovation work he undertook, but the shower dug deep into him with tender fingers, undoing stresses and loosening knots.

His mind drifted, clouding pleasantly. 

The salt of the ocean breeze hitting his face... A cave, bastion battered by the waves... A lamplit Hogwarts from across the lake on a bobbing little boat... The great elm his last autumn at Hogwarts, leaf-blanket picnics and red hair and pumpkin-sweet kisses... Gin splayed out on his bed at the cottage, chest heaving; now alone out in their bedroom, awaiting him... Brown eyes, pupils blown so wide they appear almost black...

Of its own accord, Harry's hand strays downwards.

Eyes ebony, with a glint of something burning behind them. Hair near as dark as his own but tamer—tightly controlled waves. Full and alluring, lips carmine without the aid of cosmetics. Freckless skin, supple but glacial against his fingertips, his palms—

His cock jerks upwards, already half-hard even without attention.

Not cold but scalding against his palm, fingers closing around himself to squeeze firmly. His length throbs in reply, growing rapidly in his grasp. He bites back the moan threatening to rise.

How long since he's been touched?

_Too long_.

It is slowly, languidly basking in heat and sensation, he strokes himself. His breathing remains deep and stable. There's none of the hurry and frenzy often assosiated with masterbation, a means to an end instead of this gently rising pleasure. 

Air rushes out his lungs in a silent stream, gasp withheld. His head slips back, connecting with the shelf behind. It hurts.

He doesn't care.

The misty thing dwelling in his mind flickers   pulsates   coruscates ...

Something icy against the heat of the shower sweeps down his spine like the caress of an insubstantial lover; ephemeral silk swoops across his shoulders, slides down his back and over the slight curve of his rear. He finds himself imagining strong hands holding him there — long fingers wrapped about his hips from behind — where he's never imagined hands like these before. The fingers of one of those hands tiptoes playfully over his abdomen — down  down  down, surrounding his own hand on his cock... batting his hand away to tug at him in powerful, unwavering strokes...

 

_Oh......           Yessssss     Yessssss yessssssssss_

 

_At the back of his fantasy, a void yawns deep——_

He begs it to take him whole.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
